It was a proud festival director Joan Gonzalez, who before the award announcement last night told the audience that almost 16000 spectators had visited DocsBarcelona this year. An increase of 50%! Much to do with the festival being longer than before, and, Gonzalez told me, the media and press coverage has been bigger. For the content, Jury President Rada Sesic told me – who is head of the programming – that she found the selection of films for the Panorama very strong.

I was happy with the awards. Maite Alberdi from Chile had her second Best Documentary Prize for ”Los Ninos” (”The Grown-Ups”), the first one was for ”Tea Time”. TV3 Catalunya stands behind the award of 5000€ in cash. The New Talent Award, also decided upon by the Panorama Jury went to ”Last Men in Aleppo” by Feras Fayad.

The Latitud Award went to ”Al Otro Lado Del Muro” (”The Other Side of the Wall”), also 5000€ to be used for completion of a work, sponsored by the facility house Antaviana Films. With a special mention to the impressive film ”Los Ofendidos” by Marcela Zamora from El Salvador.

Great pleasure to see two good friends on video on the big screen for the newly established ”What the Doc” award: Audrius Stonys for ”Woman and the Glacier” and Pawel Lozinski for ”You Have No Idea How Much I Love You”. The two documentary artists were glad to share with each other an award given by a one man jury, local great filmmaker Inaki Lacuesta.

And then Rahul Jain with ”Machines” was on stage to thank for the Amnesty International Award. He made a brilliant speech that I will try to get hold of. Listen readers, Jain is only 24 years old and has made this cinematic masterpiece…

The audience decided to give Catalina Mesa the award for ”Jerico” that is wonderful warm film about wonderful warm women.

Some more local awards were given, you can check them on

www.docsbarcelona.com

Una Noche Fantastica, she said, when she came to the stage after the film ”La Chana” about her had been shown. Full house for the closing film of the 20th edition of DocsBarcelona, standing ovation in several stages – when the film was finished, when Antonia Santiago Amador, a true diva, entered the cinema and walked to the stage, and when she sat down and danced her flamenco again.

This was indeed an unforgettable night, and for me who had seen the film a couple of times before, I am happy to say chapeau to the young Croatian born director Lucija Stojevic, who studied architecture in Edinburgh, film in Prague and who is now living in Barcelona. The film is well made, the rythm found, the use of photos and archive and the footage of today superbly mixed. It’s not easy to make a film where you have to choose when to direct the camera towards the face and when towards the feet of La Chana!

You filmed my soul, La Chana said to Lucija Stojevic.

http://www.noon-films.com/portfolio_page/lachana/

I Have No Idea How Much They Loved It – but I think they did, the audience for the masterclass with Polish Pawel Lozinski. We (Lozinski and I as the moderator) enjoyed a lot what we were asked to do: Choose 7 shots/sequences from your films and talk about them. Mostly about the form, the aesthetical choices after setting up the clip with some background information on content.

”Birthday” from 1992 was the first shot, the film that won the first prize at the festival on Bornholm, Baltic Film & TV Festival. It was the first film of Pawel Lozinski, a tough one on the famous Jewish Polish writer Henryk Grynberg searching for the remains of his father, who was killed during the war. Shot on 16mm film.

Later on Lozinski made the film ”The Way It Is” from his neighbourhood (1999), ”Chemo” from 2009, which is a film he decided to do when his mother got cancer, the controversial ”Father and Son” (2013) that was meant to be a film by Marcel and Pawel together, but Marcel decided to make his own version… It did not make the conflicted relationship between them easier!

If that was the reason for Lozinski to make ”You Have No Idea…”, I asked him. Could be, he said about the film that was shown in the cinema later that same friday.

As a small gift to the audience, ”Sisters” (11 minutes) was shown, a film that Pawel Lozinski shot when he had a break in shooting ”The Way It Is”. What are you doing, the sisters asked the director when they met in the courtyard. I am making a film about interesting people in my neighbourhood, he answered. Are we interesting, they asked. See the film, Yes they are!

www.docsbarcelona.com

”New Directions and Perspectives in Documentary Films” was the title of the 90 minutes long panel discussion at the CCCB friday afternoon, moderated in a professional and warm manner by Debra Zimmerman from Women Make Movies in New York, the organisation that has 600 films in its catalogue. After one hour Zimmerman said, ”Sooo, I am sure you have noticed that I have not yet asked you what it means to be a woman filmmaker…”.

Instead we got a very interesting one-by-one presentation of the young filmmakers, who showed a clip from their films and told the audience how they came to make documentaries. A classic comment came from Roser Corella, Catalan director living in Berlin, ”I used to work in television but I wanted to try on my own, develop the creative part”. Her film is ”Grap and Run” about bride kidnapping in Kirgizstan”, a film that has had a big audience at the festival.

As has indeed ”Amazona” by Clare Weiskopf, filmmaker and journalist. The opening film of the festival, a film about

motherhood, she said, where I had ”to find my own voice”. At the beginning she did not want to be in the film, but ”I was drawn into it”. What did your mother say when she saw the film, Zimmerman asked. ”She saw a rough cut and said that I could be harder with her”.

Lucija Stojevic, of Croatian origin, is the director of ”La Chana”, that closes the festival tonight sunday. The main character had not been dancing for 30 years when she came back to the stage. It is a film about lost love and reinvention, the audience favourite at IDFA 2016 (my comment), ”it took me five years to make it”, when I showed a rough cut to ”la chana”, she hated it, later she loved it, when I told her what other people thought!

Bobbi jo Hart, American living in Canada, got the biggest applause for her trailer for the film ”Rebels on Pointe”, that is about ”les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo” that (from the catalogue) ”has become a symbol of transvestism making parodies of great ballet classics”. Bobbi Jo Hart has made several films on groups especially within the sport world. ”I grew up as a sport girl”.

Karin Steinberger, co-director of ”The Promise”, is the German journalist who has been following the case of Jens Soerling, the German who has been in an American prison for 31 years. Steinberger told the audience how she met met him 10-11 years ago, how she was in contact with him in March, how the intelligent Jens hopes to get out when still new evidence comes out…

To be a woman filmmaker… Karen Steinberger as a co-director with a man, ”I had to fight to get to the microphone at interviews”. Jo Hart: ”All my films are about women. I love what I am doing and am proud of it”. Lucija Stojevic: ”It was hard to pitch a film about an old woman”. Clare Weiskopf: ”I was told when we came to marketing: you never put a photo of an old woman on the poster!”. Roser Corella: ”I have seen how sceptical woman are when they see that I do the camera”. Karen Steinberger: ”It’s very sad that we still have to talk about it”.

Any advice for upcoming filmmakers, Debra Zimmerman asked? ”Take the risk” ”do it!”, ”stick to your intuition”, ”respect yourself”, ”you have to have a thick skin, it’s easy to be lost in the jungle”, ”time is the keyword”, ”documentary is a life style”.

Photo from the lively and funny lunch before the panel discussion, from left: Debra Zimmerman, Roser Corella, Karin Steinberger, Bobbi Jo Hart, Lucija Stojevic, Clare Weiskopf and our host Carmina.

www.docsbarcelona.com 

I have organised this together with Martina Rogers from DocsBarcelona for years and I enjoy it very much. From the picture (from last year) you might see that in nice sofas there is seated an exclusive panel of people from different sides of the documentary community. The goal is to generate creative and constructive discussions that will favour the further development of the projects, i.e. the story building, the character development, the editing quality.

We were again fortunate to have a fine panel: filmmaker, teacher and programmer at the festival Daniel Jariod, festival director Inti Cordera from Mexico, Jordi Ambros from TV3 Catalunya (for one session), Rada Sesic from Sarajevo FF, where she is head of documentaries, at DocsBarcelona she is president of the main jury, Debra Zimmermann from Women Make Movies in New York, Hanka Kastelicová from HBO Europe, Esther van Messel from First Hand Films in Switzerland (for two sessions) and Chris Hastings from PBS – World Channel.

And most important the filmmakers, who received valuable positive and constructive criticism from the panel:

Marlén Viñayo from El Salvador with ”Cachada” about wonderful women, who gather to talk about ”the circles of violence” they have experienced and who end up, with the help of a theatre director, making a play about these issues. Director Roberto Salinas and choreographer Laura Domingo from Italy/Nicaragua and Cuba with ”Cuban Dancer”, the story of the enormous talented ballet dancer, 15 year old Alexis, who with his parents move to Florida. How will he be able to continue his career after having been at the Cuba Ballet School? Director Sebastian Saam with ”Tatap” about super star, one-armed guitarist Andrés Godoy from Chile, his life in that country, the family, the Allende period, the accident where he lost an arm and his Asian concert tour.

www.docsbarcelona.com

We had the traditional sunday dinner invited by festival director Joan Gonzalez. His wife and my wife were there, Joan and his son Marti, with whom I always talk football. Barca – FC Barcelona – first of all, on the situation now for the club that ended up being number 2 and is out of the Champions League. What remains is to win Copa del Rey. Which players will be sold and who will come for the next season…

And then the magical moment happened – reminding us of the time when Barca won it all: Into the restaurant comes Xavi Hernandez, the maestro, with his family, the playmaker, the man who gave the play a flow, a humble and total loyal man to the club, 600 matches. He is now playing in Qatar, 37 years old.

… and now back to the festival, where I saw three films. Chilean Maite Alberdi’s ”Los Niños” (”The Grown Ups”) featuring adults

with Down syndrome at the same school, a love story, a moving, humorous and sweet one, but also a sad one as Ricardo has to leave Anita because his sisters no longer want to support his stay. The film does not have the level of her previous ”Tea Time” but still Alberdi is a true auteur and knows how to create atmosphere.

I am happy we selected ”Born in Deir Yassin” by Israeli Neta Shoshani. I had never heard about the massacre in the Arab city, which since 1951 hosts a hospital for mentally ill. This was set up three years after the massacre in 1948. Young Shoshani has managed to do interviews with several old men (many of the are now dead), who were there as killers or photographers or had the task to move away or bury the burnt corpses! It’s a story that is not well known in Israel and it was not possible for the director – with the help of a lawyer – to get access and publish the photos taken. Forbidden by the High Court, to publish them could disturb the national security, it was stated. Parallel to this horror story, another shameful event in Israeli history, the director places the story of a mother, who was at the hospital for decades. She gave birth to a boy at the place, Dror, who was taken away from her. The letters she wrote to him are being read and Dror is there in the ghost town Deir Yassin. During the Q&A Neta Shoshani told us that the film has not yet been screened in Israel. The plan is that it should go on television and premiere at Jerusalem Film Festival this summer. But you never know if the very active minister of culture will intervene and forbid it.

And then a film that made me have a smile on the face the whole way through the 79 minutes it lasted, ”Siberian Love” (photo) by Russian Olga Delane, who lives in Berlin but goes back to her village in Siberia to find out how it goes with love between Sascha and Ira, Oleg and Lyuba and many others, many of them her relatives. She went there seven times and you can see that in the film, she is able to get close to them, especially the women, not so much the men, who – yes, it is not a kliché – drink a lot. Quite a lot! There are funny and tender moments and moments with children, where you fear, what will become of them. It’s a hard life they conduct, farming and family, as one says. Quarrels and peace in the family. They have not really thought about this thing called love… Olga Delane was there for the screening at the CCCB, where we had the longest Q&A session so far, more than half an hour. Goood!

www.docsbarcelona.com

http://siberian-love.com/ 

… and Son, and Jens Soering. I saw four films yesterday i.e. saturday here at the DocsBarcelona 20th edition. Let me start with a wonderful moment at the Q&A after the film ”All Governments Lie”. A 12 year old girl asked in fine English (not that common in Catalonia!) the director, Canadian Alfred Peabody, ”do you think that my generation can change the world”! Apparently she was inspired by the film and its timely subject, a free and independent press. The director told her ”why don’t you become a journalist” as was the man, who inspired Peabody to make the film, legendary journalist I.F. Stone. I am old enough to remember him and his direct criticism of the Americans being at Vietnam. There is great archive with Stone but the film also introduces people who have been inspired by him: Michael Moore, who of course praises Stone’s humour, Glenn Greenwald who worked on Laura Poitras’ Snowden film and set up The Intercept together with her and Jeremy Scahill. Greenwald says that had Stone been alive today, he would probably have been a blogger. Below a link to the website of the film, where you find all the journalists in the film and their comments on the mass media manipulated world we live in.

Before that film I had seen Catalan Roser Corella’s ”Grab and Run”, that introduces and discusses the Kirgisz tradition for kidnapping of women for marriage. An anthropological study that also includes a shocking ending, where the filmmakers follow a kidnapping of a woman. I did not follow the discussion in Catalan but I guess the ethics of filming this incident was raised. The photo pictures the couple, the photo was chosen by the festival to be the poster.

And then I had fun with father and son in ”Deux Cancres” by French Ludovic Vieuille (who will be present for the second screening May 26 20.15, COME!). It is an excellent piece of documentary, full of embarrassing moments when the two fight with the French grammar, the boy being impatient, the father trying his best, having to give up again and again because he does not understand the questions raised in the books the boy brings home. Shot over a long period, the camera registers their mood and lets us have a bitter-sweet laugh. Why does he have to go through all this stupidity in the French education system. OMG! It is a clever film, and emotional!

Where ”Deux Cancres” is minimalistic in tone and scope, Marcus Vetter’s ”The Promise” is a brilliant piece of journalism that is taken to the level of a Shakespearean drama, a love story, a demonstration of the crazy American judicial system, and first of all the meeting with German Jens Soering, who has been in jail for more than 30 years for something that he has not done; that is the conclusion you make having seen the film and listened to him. Vetter got permission to make an interview with him for four hours. I watched the television version, 3 hours, on Danish television and enjoyed to see it here in Barcelona on a big screen with Marcus Vetter present to answer questions at a screening that lasted till just after midnight.   

https://allgovernmentslie.com/film

http://promise-movie.com/the-movie/

www.docsbarcelona.com

It was the third time that I saw ”Untitled” by Michael Glawogger and Monika Willi. Glawogger was here in Barcelona in 2014 to show his ”Whore’s Glory” and do a masterclass. Some months later the same year he passed away. His editor Monika Willi made ”Untitled”, interpreting what Glawogger would have done with the material and adding her own interpretation. I discover new moments every time. There were 25 spectators for the screening at 4pm at the Aribau Club Cinema, there will hopefully be more for the next screening this coming wednesday. There are great films and there are films that are more than that, that stand out – I was happy to watch ”Three Rooms of Melancholia” by Pirjo Hinkasalo in Tbilisi and I am happy to have met Glawogger and seen also this last film by him, and the trilogy he left to us, ”Whore’s Glory”, ”Workingman’s Death” and ”Megacities”. Honkasalo and Glawogger: Film History. I will try to write a review of ”Untitled” later on. Maybe I should watch it for the fourth time.

It was also the third time I was with John and Amanda, wonderful teachers, who are the main characters in ”In Loco Parentis” by Irish Neasa Ni Chianáin and David Rane, who were at the screening yesterday (see photo) to meet the audience for a short Q&A session. The film is a fine success all over and is now going to theatres in the US with the distribution company Magnolia taking care of it. Watching the film always makes me think back to my own school time and the teachers, yes, there were some fine ones who cared.

The selection for DocsBarcelona of course has a special eye for Spanish language documentaries and I enjoyed to be taught about the peace process in Colombia in ”El Silencio de los Fusiles” by Natalia Orozco, who has done interviews with the government and its representatives as well as with several comandante’s from FARC. Amazing she could get that access to make an interesting journalistic work!

Tough evening in Aribau Club 1, thematically – the last film to be shown was ”Last Men in Aleppo” by Feras Fayyad, we have written about that touching tragic and human film that wins awards at many festivals. Is it a candidate here as well?

www.docsbarcelona.com